Choosing a Title

Choosing a title for a novel is hard. Well, it is for me.

I called the first book in the Guarding universe "Meskka" for quite a while. My thinking on this went something as follows:
The series on a whole is about the Guardians, with more being revealed about them and their history over the course of several books. Each book will be about something else in the same universe, with some of the same characters and some over-arching plot lines tying each book together.

So, the first book in the series was about the Meskka, thus, "Meskka" for a title. The only thing I didn't like about this was that the title just by itself didn't tell you much about the book. Sure, it'd make sense after reading the book, but the title should say something by itself to someone who's glancing at titles on a shelf. There's also the danger of having a made-up word for a title, it really doesn't say anything. Some readers don't care, and some will browse right past them.

I played around with several different titles looking for one that I liked the sound of, fit with the series title (The Guardian Chronicles, Book 1), and described the book. Some examples of the brainstorming process:
"Cats of Alkask" (I thought "cats" was somewhat misleading, and it didn't sound good)
"Allies of Alkask" (I like, except one of the very minor plot points is "are the meskka going to be allies or not?" this title kinda ruins that, or at least creates the impression that it does.)
"CATS IN SPACE!" (I wasn't serious about this one at all, but it popped into my head... too many muppets....)
"A Strange New World" (This one kinda sums it up, but it's already taken ;) )

I didn't really love any of these. Then I thought about it from another angle. I wanted the title to fit in with the rest of the series, and I'd already thought of a title for the second book in the series, "Threat From the Past". Thinking about this gave me the title, "A New Threat" for the first book, that sums up a few different plot lines in this book. I like it, and people I've ran it past seem to like it too.

Anyone else have title tips to share?

Excerpt

OK, here's an excerpt from "An Unwanted Apprentice". Please bear in mind that this is a first draft, so it's full of errors. Hopefully, it'll make you want to read more...

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The wind eventually died down, and Creina opened her eyes. One of the men was laying face down on the bridge, the other was standing next to him, sword drawn and scanning the horizon.
The clouds had dissipated and the weather was now back to normal for a springtime afternoon, except for the light mist covering the river. Creina strained to see through it, but couldn't make out the opposite bank. It slowly dissipated, leaving the surface of everything around them damp. It seemed to be taking a long time to clear as far as the other shore. The young woman who had helped her out of the river jumped up from where she was crouched in front of her, and the air around the two of them stopped rippling.
"The other bank," the woman said, pointing, "it's not there."
Water stretched back beyond where the opposite bank had been. A large crater was further inland, and the river was slowly filling it.
"So much for this ford." the young man with the sword said as he stared at the crater. "What happened?"
The woman bent down and felt the unconscious man's neck. She sighed, in relief, Creina thought. Apparently he was still alive.
"Alenk used a spell," the woman said.
"What?" the young man glanced down at the other, Alenk, the girl had called him, then back at the crater. "I've never heard of one powerful enough to do.... that!" he said, gesturing at the remains of the riverbank.
"Excuse me..." Creina said, her voice coming out barely above a whisper.
They both turned to look at her.
"Oh no!" The woman whirled around and rushed over to her. "I forgot all about you! I'm sorry! I'm Kendra, this is Tannin, and the unconscious one is Alenk."
She cleared her throat and forced herself to sound not as afraid as she felt. "Will he be okay?"
"Oh, he'll be fine," Kendra waved a hand dismissively at him, "he just used too much energy."
"Pardon me," Tannin interrupted, "but how shall we address you, miss...?"
"Creina," she said, "My name is Creina. And... what just happened? Are you wizards? Are we in Rogim?"
Kendra looked over at Tannin.
"Those two are Wizards," he said, "I'm a knight of Rogim, and we are currently on the border. I'm not quite sure what happened myself."
"Good," Creina took a big breath. "If you're a knight, you're just the person I need to talk to. The military recently executed the king and took over, they're looting the countryside, and plan on invading Rogim."
"It's worse than we thought then," Tannin said, glancing at the carriage still parked farther back along the trail. "We should warn the capital immediately."
"Yes, but the fastest way to do that is to wait for him to wake up." Kendra said, jerking a thumb back at Alenk.
At that, Alenk moaned, and slowly sat up. "What hit me?"
"Class one restricted battle spell from the second dynasty, I believe." Kendra said.
Alenk looked at the crater. "Oh."
He was silent for a moment then looked over at Creina. "Are you okay?" She nodded.
Kendra quickly filled him in on what Creina had told them.
"I'll let the the Council know about it." he said, and walked off into the forest.
Creina wasn't quite sure she wanted to know how he was going to do that. She'd heard stories about wizards. She'd never met one of course, it'd been years since anyone in Caradan had seen a wizard. So far, the two in front of her weren't what she'd expected. If one listened to the Natas, wizards were mean, evil creatures with pale skin, black hair and even blacker eyes and a black soul and cruel heart to match. These two were about as far from that stereotype as you could get. That didn't exactly surprise Creina though, from the way a Natas mystic changed the subject every time someone asked about wizards, she gathered that the two groups had some kind of disagreement in the past.
The other stereotype description of wizards that she'd heard stated that they were kindly old crones who traveled the countryside preaching about some strange foreign god and practicing magic to try to convert people to their belief. Creina didn't give much credence to either view; both sounded like they had been watered down over time by many different people--none of whom had probably ever actually met a wizard.

New Title for "A Wizard of Arade"

I've finally come up with a better title for "A Wizard of Arade".

An Unwanted Apprentice

So what do you think?

I think it captures more of the opening of the book, and I think it sounds more compelling as well. I've decided on the series name of "The Land of Arade" (yes, there will be a sequel or two, as well as more books set in the same land.

Magic Systems in Fantasy

Magic of some sort is a staple in Fantasy books. If you've read a lot of fantasy (and I'm assuming you have, or you probably wouldn't be reading this blog... No, wait! Don't leave!) you'll notice that there's always a system to the magic, certain rules that it has to follow. The literary reason for this is there would be no conflict, and thus no book if any and every problem could be solved in a *poof*.
Lots of writing sites talk in depth about this, so I want to outline the magic system that I'm using in A Wizard of Arade.

(By the way, if anyone reading this has a better idea for a title, please share it in the comments...)

Magic in the world of Arade isn't the same as the magic found in most fantasy books. Religion is a major part of the book,  and the magic system is tightly integrated into it.
A Wizard is someone that Ard (an analogy for God in the book) has given the ability to manipulate the natural world. (A person can also get power from evil-- that will come into play later in the book.) This ability is limited by two things: an individuals energy, and their knowledge about what they're manipulating. (If I did my job right, this is all explained in the book as part of the story..)

So in this case, if someone is very tired, or doesn't know how something works, they either can't use magic, or can only do very limited things with it.

Yes, I know, this an awfully sc-fi way of dealing with a magic system, but hey, I like sci-fi and fantasy. ;)

If any of this sounds interesting, you can read the first draft of the first chapter... there's a link over to the left.

Tomorrow (hopefully...) I'll talk about Christian Fantasy...

More to come....

Busy, busy, busy lately.

This weekend, I'll hopefully have some time to write. If I do, I'll post an excerpt of what I'm working on for A Wizard of Arade. (Also, if anyone has ideas for a different title for it, let me know!)

Oh, I don't know if I mentioned this or not, but Suvudo.com has a contest where you can enter your novel and the top prize is an edit by Del Rey's chief editor, and possible publication!
I entered Meskka, and we'll see what happens!

Much Ado About Nothing

Yup, the title pretty much says it all. Not much going on in writing land today.

I have one more person going over my short story before I send it in to the writing contest. My wife is still reading through Meskka before I send that out to agents.

I'm working some more on A Wizard of Arade. At some point I should really think up something more than just the working title, but nothing comes to mind. As to where I'm at in the writing process, I'm just past the plot catalyst now. The dragon has been dealt with, and our friends are about to start the real adventure... lucky them... :)

Map of Arade is up...

I have the map for Arade posted now,

go check it out!

The map is just a rough draft, it's just done in pencil for now, and since I'm only a few chapters into the first draft there isn't much detail yet. More details will be added later.

Also, if you love fantasy, check out the preview chapter from "A Wizard of Arade"!

(Do remember that it's a first draft, so there are lots of spelling and grammatical errors and the content may change drastically before the final version.)

A new map

I made a preliminary map today for the fantasy book I'm writing. I also changed the working title to "A Wizard of Arade" because too many things were sounding the same. (Not that I expect this particular working title to survive all the way through anyway, but I do plan on keeping the world name.

I'll post the map here after I've done some more work on it. Right now it just has basic continent shapes and the two town names that exist so far.

I'm still here!

I had a good holiday season with my family. I didn't get much writing done, but I had fun.

I've been working on A Wizard of Aarde and am now on Chapter 2.

Still waiting for reviewers to get back to me on Meskka. And I've been working on the query letter for it.

New Project

Some of you may have noticed a new project in the list off to the right.

First, don't worry, I haven't stopped working on Meskka. I just had another idea that I had to get down before I forgot it, so I started writing and have the rough draft of the first chapter done.

I'm still working on editing Meskka, and hope to have that done before the end of the year. (Yeah, I've said that before.) Right now, I finished that additional scene with Jake, and have started a re-read from page 1. The things I'm looking for right now are: spelling and grammar; sentence flow; character and scene descriptions; dropped plot lines; and anything else that doesn't sound or feel right.

One example: I was reading along and a sentence didn't sound right. After I read it a few times, I relized I had ended it with a preposition. It's much better now. ;)